Comment by mannykannot
6 years ago
You are right that, for the purpose of this exercise, the author's intent is not the issue (though it explicitly is in the next question.) This question is not the best one to make the point; take, for example, question 35 -- personally, I would pick B but can understand why someone might pick C, which might, for all I know, be the nominal answer.
The worst cases seem to be where the question-setter has a fixed idea of what the right answer is and does not understand the subject deeply enough to see that there are other issues. This has happened to me in technical interviews, as well as a test-prep class that I almost got thrown out of.
Question 35 is testing whether you know how "metaphors" work. B is correct because "putting toys back into the chest" is a metaphor for the weekend's fun-and-games being over. C cannot be correct because it's referring to the text's literal meaning ("organizing things") without giving effect to the "metaphor" call-out in the prompt.
Maybe we are looking at different versions of the article (or did you intend to reply to ascar?) In the test quoted at https://www.huffpost.com/entry/standardized-tests-are-so-bad..., Question 35 is this one:
35 The imagery in lines 16 through 19 helps the reader understand –
A the shift in the speaker’s attitude
B the speaker’s unpleasantness
C why the speaker has no friends
D what the speaker thinks of others
Sorry, I thought you meant "next question" in my link, not the article. As to Question 35 in the article: that is testing if you know what "imagery" means. What is imagery? It's using words to convey a sensory impression or feeling. B is the only one that describes a sensory impression or feeling.
> A the shift in the speaker’s attitude
It's not A, because the cited lines contain no reference to any shift. The rest of the poem implies a shift or mood swing, but the cited portion helps you understand the current mood, not the shift.
> B the speaker’s unpleasantness
> C why the speaker has no friends
C assumes facts not in evidence. The poem doesn't say the author has no friends. It says she is in a mood where she could not attract friends. The imagery is directed specifically to the author's unpleasantness. One can speculate that, as a result, she has no friends, but that's not necessarily true. B is the more direct and thus better answer.
> D what the speaker thinks of others
The text is talking about the author, not others. You can speculate what the author thinks about others, but that's not what the question is asking.
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